Somehow the latter does not feel appropriate, so I do the gentlemanly thing and lay her skirts back down and sit beside her, taking her delicate hand in mine. I do not speak, for fear of saying the wrong thing. I wonder if she loved him and think perhaps that’s why she’s been such a prig all this time. Is she grieving, and all this was an escape to take her mind off him? Oh, damn it, has she been using me?

Miss Walker

She holds my hand and looks at me earnestly. She does not speak so I feel I must go on. I’m very conscious of how hot I am suddenly and that it probably wasn’t the perfect moment to broach this, but it’s done. So, I explain.

Miss Lister

She starts to cry and reveals that she had been engaged to a man. He’d only been dead a month before she first kissed me and within four months, here she is sat on my knee and I with the taste of her on my lips.

She seems to have genuinely cared for the poor fellow and been prepared for marriage. Then a shock. Then I swagger in and assume she’s single and available and just a bit of a prude. Does this change things between us? I’d rather hoped she had never had feelings for a man; that way I could be sure she felt as I do about women. To hear her declare that she was willing to marry a man makes me wonder about everything.

I manage to talk her from her tears with a thousand apologies. If I’d have known I would never have made any moves towards kissing her. We would have remained friends until she was past her grief. I would never have pressured her for a decision on our relationship if I’d have known she’d not long ago been engaged to another.

No wonder she could not give me a decision. But why keep a thing like that to herself? Does everyone know but me? What a fool. No wonder her aunt warned her off me if she thought I had no care for her grief.

I listen to her talk about him; he sounds a fool, but nice enough, and handsome she tells me, as if I care. Penniless of course. If he’d been a Count, I could have seen his love as genuine, but the Walker sisters are a good catch for their wealth. Surely she saw this. She’s better off with him dead.